Privacy policy

1. General

This privacy policy explains how we, Blaser Treuhand AG (hereinafter referred to as “we”, “us” or similar), collect and process personal data in connection with the operation and use of our website.

The responsible and legally compliant handling of data is important to us. We comply at all times with applicable law, in particular Swiss data protection law.

If you act on behalf of a company, we may assume that you are authorised to act on behalf of the company in connection with your acknowledgement and/or acceptance of this privacy policy (apparent authority), irrespective of the company’s internal regulations or relationships and entries in the commercial register and without further verification of authorisation. When we refer to “you” or “your” or the like in this privacy policy, we always mean the company for which you are acting and its employees.

2. Collection and processing of personal data

Personal data is considered to be any information relating to a specific or identifiable person. A data subject is a person about whom personal data is processed. Processing includes any handling of personal data, in particular its collection, storage, retention, use, modification, disclosure and deletion.

We primarily process personal data that we receive from you or collect about you in connection with the operation and use of our website and related applications. The entry of personal or business data on our website is voluntary.

In addition to the personal data that you make available to us directly (e.g. registering for a newsletter or using a contact or feedback form), the categories of personal data that we receive about you from third parties include, in particular, information from public registers (e.g. debt collection registers or commercial register), credit check information (if we do business with you), if applicable your interests and other socio-demographic data (for marketing purposes), data in connection with the use of our website (e.g. IP address, MAC address, settings and other information of the used device, cookies, date and time of visit, websites accessed and content, functions used, referring website, location information).

If you provide us with personal data of other persons (e.g. family members, work colleagues), you must ensure that these persons have consented to such provision and have taken note of the contents of this privacy policy.

3. Purpose of data processing and legal basis

We process personal data primarily for the following purposes:

• Concluding and processing contracts for services or products that you request via our website.
• Ensuring the operation of our website and related applications.
• Responding to queries you send to us via contact and feedback forms on our website
• Fulfilment of our legal obligations at home and abroad

In addition, we process your personal data as well as that of others insofar as legally permissible and this appears to us to be appropriate. We also process this data for the following purposes in which we have a legitimate interest corresponding to the respective purpose:

• Further development of our website and related applications as well as our offers and services;
• marketing (e.g. sending newsletters), unless you have objected to this use of your personal data;
• assertion of legal claims and defence in connection to legal disputes and administrative proceedings.

We process personal data in accordance with Swiss data protection law and, if and to the extent applicable, with the EU GDPR. With reference to the EU GDPR, we process personal data with the consent of the data subject (Art. 6, para. 1 (a) EU GDPR), for the performance of a contract with the data subject and for the implementation of corresponding pre-contractual measures (Art. 6, para 1, (b) EU GDPR). b EU GDPR), to comply with a legal obligation to which we are subject under any applicable law of the EU or under any applicable law of a country in which the EU GDPR applies in whole or in part (Art. 6, para. 1 lit. c EU GDPR), and to safeguard the legitimate interests of us or of third parties, unless the interests or fundamental rights and freedoms of the data subject override these. Legitimate interests in particular include our business interest in being able to operate our website, information security, the assertion of our own legal claims and compliance with Swiss law (Art. 6, para. 1 lit. f EU-GDPR).

If you have given us your consent to process your personal data for specific purposes (e.g. when registering to receive newsletters), we shall process your personal data within the scope of and based on this consent, unless we have another legal basis that is required. Consent that has been granted can be revoked at any time, although this has no effect on data processing that has already taken place.

4. Duration of the retention of personal data

We process your personal data for as long as this is necessary for the purposes pursued with the processing or for the fulfilment of our contractual and legal obligations, as well as beyond this in accordance with the legal retention and documentation obligations.

We may retain personal data for the period in which claims may be brought against our company (i.e. in particular during the statutory limitation period) and to the extent that we are otherwise required to do so by law or legitimate business interests so require (e.g. for the purposes of providing evidence and documentation). As soon as your personal data is no longer needed for the above purposes, we will delete or anonymise it as a matter of principle and as far as possible. In the case of longer-term storage obligations, we restrict processing as much as possible.

5. Transfer of personal data

Within the scope of the purposes mentioned in point 3 and our business activities, we disclose your personal data to third parties, in particular to our service providers, suppliers and auxiliary persons (e.g. hosting providers, IT service providers, software suppliers, providers of newsletter services, debt collection service providers, banks, legal advisors/lawyers) as well as to authorities, official agencies or courts in Switzerland and abroad, insofar as this is legally permissible and appears appropriate to us.

When we transfer data to a country that does not have adequate data protection legislation, we ensure the suitable protection of your data as provided for by law by way of contractual agreements or by making use of the legal exceptions, in particular the exceptions of consent, contract execution and the establishment, exercise or assertion of legal claims.

6. Services of third parties

6.1 Newsletter

We use MailChimp, a service of The Rocket Science Group LLC in Atlanta, USA, to send newsletters. Further information can be found in their privacy policy, which can be accessed via the following link:

https://mailchimp.com/legal/privacy/

It is possible to unsubscribe from each individual newsletter.

In our newsletters, where permitted, we use technologies (e.g. visible and invisible image elements and/or links) to determine whether and if you have opened the newsletter and which links have been clicked, and to measure and better understand how you used our offers and to tailor them to you.

By agreeing to receive newsletters, you consent to the use of the technologies used in our newsletters. Most e-mail applications are preconfigured in such a way that they allow the use of these technologies. If you do not want this, then you need to adjust the settings of your e-mail application (e.g. Microsoft Outlook) accordingly.

6.2 Hosting

We host our website with Cyon in Basel, Switzerland. At Cyon, standard web server log files containing the following information are created for each access to this website: IP address, date and time including time zone, browser query including origin of the query (referrer), operating system used including user interface and version, browser used including language and version and amount of data transferred. The log files are used to identify technical problems as well as to ensure security and for statistical evaluation of the use of our website with the open source software AWStats, which is used by Cyon.

6.3 Other third party services

6.3. 1 Google Analytics:

We use Google Analytics. This service of Google LLC in Mountain View, USA (“Google”) enables us to measure and evaluate the use of our website on a non-personal basis. The service uses permanent cookies that Google places. Google does not receive any personal data from us (and does not store any IP addresses), but may track your use of the website, combine this information with data from other websites you have visited and which are also tracked by Google, and use these findings for its own purposes (e.g. to control advertising). If you are logged in with a Google account, Google will also recognise you. Google is responsible for processing your personal data in accordance with its data protection regulations. Google merely informs us how our website is used (without providing any information about you personally). Google has undertaken to guarantee appropriate data protection in accordance with the EU-US and Swiss-US Privacy Shield. For more information on this topic, please see Google’s privacy policy at the following link:

https://policies.google.com/privacy

6.3.2 Google Maps, Google Invisible reCAPTCHA and YouTube:

We use Google Maps to integrate maps, Google Invisible reCAPTCHA to protect against bots and spam and YouTube to integrate videos. These services of Google LLC in Mountain View, USA (“Google”), among other things use cookies and data is transmitted to Google in the USA, although we assume that no personal tracking takes place within this context solely through the use of our website. Google has undertaken to guarantee appropriate data protection in accordance with the EU-US and Swiss-US Privacy Shield. For more information on this topic, please see Google’s privacy policy at the following link:

https://policies.google.com/privacy

6.3. 3 Live chat

The live chat is provided by Crisp IM (https://crisp.chat). The use of the live chat is subject to the terms of use (available at crisp.chat/de/terms/) and the privacy statement (available at https://crisp.chat/de/privacy/) of the live chat provider.

6.3.4 Social plugins:

We use so-called social plugins from social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and LinkedIn on our website. You can usually recognise the social plugins by the logos/symbols of the respective social networks. We have configured the social plugins using the data protection-friendly solution “Shariff” so that they are deactivated by default. This allows you to determine yourself whether and when data is transmitted to the operators of the respective social networks. When you visit our website, therefore, no data is automatically transmitted to the social networks as a matter of principle. Only when you activate the social plugins yourself by clicking on the respective button does your browser establish a connection to the servers of the respective social network and transmit usage data to its operator. You agree to this by clicking on the respective button.

We have no influence on the type and scope of the data collected or its subsequent processing by the operators of the respective social networks. These operators are responsible for processing the data in accordance with their data protection regulations. You can find these under the following links:

Facebook: www.facebook.com/about/privacy/ and www.facebook.com/help/?faq=186325668085084

Twitter: https://twitter.com/en/privacy

Google+: https://policies.google.com/privacy

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/legal/privacy-policy?_l=

Pinterest: http://about.pinterest.com/privacy/

7. Rights of data subjects

Individuals about whom we process personal data have the right to request confirmation from us as to whether personal data is being processed by us and, if so, information about our processing of their personal data. Furthermore, data subjects may, if provided for under the data protection law applicable to them, have the processing of their personal data restricted, exercise their right to data portability, have their personal data corrected, deleted (“right to be forgotten”) or blocked, revoke consent given and object to the processing of their personal data.

Exercising the aforementioned rights usually requires that you can clearly prove your identity. Provide a copy of your identification for this purpose if your identity is otherwise not clear or cannot be verified (e.g. by exercising your rights via the forms provided on our website).

We reserve the right to assert the restrictions provided for by law, for example if we are obliged to store or process specific personal data, if we have an overriding interest in doing so (insofar as we are entitled to refer to this) or if we need it to assert claims. Please note that the exercise of the above rights may conflict with contractual arrangements between you and us (e.g. for the provision of services you have ordered through our website) and may result in consequences such as early termination of the contract or costs. In these cases we will inform you in advance.

In addition, persons about whom we process personal data have the right to enforce their claims in court as well as the right to lodge a complaint with a competent supervisory authority for data protection. The supervisory authority for data protection in Switzerland is the Federal Data Protection and Information Commissioner (FDPIC). Information on the FDPIC can be found at the following link:

https://www.edoeb.admin.ch/edoeb/en/home.html

Data subjects and supervisory authorities can contact us by e-mail or by post at the addresses given in point 8.

In addition, you have the option of using the forms provided on our website to assert your right to information, correction and deletion.

8. Responsibility

Blaser Treuhand AG is responsible for the data processing described in this privacy policy. If you have any data protection-related questions, you can contact our data protection officer by e-mail or post. You can reach him as follows:

Blaser Treuhand AG
Michael Blaser
Schwarzenburgstrasse 265
3098 Köniz, Switzerland

info(a)treuhandbern.ch

9. Data security

We take appropriate technical and organisational security precautions to protect your personal data against unauthorised access and misuse (e.g. encryption of data carriers and data transfers, access restrictions). Access to our website is via SSL/TLS encryption.

10. Changes

We may amend this privacy policy at any time without advance notice. The version currently published on this website shall apply.

Partially based on DSAT.ch